Dean Malcolm Morrison (left) and Hartt's Alumna of the Year Ai-Lan Zhu at Commencement 2005

The Hartt School honored opera singer Ai-Lan Zhu as its Alumna of the Year at the Hartt Commencement ceremony in Lincoln Theater on May 15.

Zhu, who graduated from The Hartt School in 1986 with an Artist Diploma, is one of America's most sought-after interpreters of the lyric repertoire. Coming to the United States from her native Beijing in 1984 for graduate work at Hartt, she stayed in this country after graduation but has made the entire opera world her stage, appearing in Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Madrid, Vienna, and Zurich, and at the Glyndebourne Festival in England.

This past season Zhu made her debut with the Nationale Reisopera in the Netherlands as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, an opera that she avoided at the start of her career due to warnings that she would be typecast. After performing diverse roles that proved the depth of her talent, she sang the title role of Butterfly to rave reviews. Lloyd Dykk of The Vancouver Sun wrote, "A fine actress, she endows this Butterfly with enormous dignity and a prescient, bittersweet wisdom. In 'Un Bel Di' ... the audience hung on every syllable, like a butterfly drunk on nectar."